Conventionally, as disclosed in Patent Document 1, a cooling device cools an inside of a refrigerator by switching between a refrigerated compartment cooling operation of flowing a refrigerant to a refrigerated compartment evaporator and a freezer compartment cooling operation of flowing the refrigerant only to a freezer compartment evaporator with a 3-way valve to cool both the refrigerated compartment and the freezer compartment with an evaporator at an appropriate evaporation temperature. The cooling device initially determines a time ratio of the refrigerated compartment cooling operation to the freezer compartment cooling operation and switches between the refrigerated compartment cooling operation and the freezer compartment cooling operation depending on the initially determined time ratio.
However, in the cooling device configured as described above, there is a problem in which a refrigerant gathers in the freezer compartment evaporator and a refrigeration circuit in which the corresponding freezer compartment evaporator is installed by selectively performing one of the refrigerated compartment cooling operation and the freezer compartment cooling operation, for example, when the refrigerated compartment cooling operation is performed. Also, there are other problems in that a variable capacity compressor taking action by initially setting the time ratio of the refrigerated compartment cooling operation to the freezer compartment cooling operation and adjusting the number of compressor rotations according to a change in a load is needed and a response to the change in the load is not good enough.
Also, as disclosed in Patent Document 2, although a cooling device may cool both the refrigerated compartment and the freezer compartment when switching between the refrigerated compartment cooling operation and the freezer compartment cooling operation, the cooling device may efficiently perform an energy-saving operation by collecting a refrigerant when the operation is switched, but is not able to solve the above-described problem in the Patent Document 1.